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Since the 1980s, packaging has been increasingly included in the environmental agenda. Worries about packaging waste have led governments to introduce packaging legislation and formulate waste policies. Since 1994, the Regulation 94/62/20.12.94 on Packaging and Packaging Waste provides a framework for measures to be taken in every country of the European Union to diminish the volume of packaging waste. Reports on a survey of Greek manufacturing aiming at the registration of the recent changes and trends in packaging materials used by consumer goods industries and the investigation of the main problems and prerequisites to meet the new legislative environment.

Over the last 15 years, all the legislation on waste management in the Republic of Macedonia has been brought in compliance with the European legislation. The major challenge in the economy, however, still happens to be the (non) implementation of the enforced laws on green economy. Major constrains in waste management practices remain to be organization of institutions and human resources; financing of services and investments; stakeholder (non) awareness; and lack of technical management in all phases from collection to final disposal of waste. It is not only that the present situation has negative impact on the public health and the environment, but it also has serious negative economic effects which consequently affects issues related to the total economic growth of the country.

The paper has a special focus on managing packaging and packaging waste and analyzes the results of the implementation of the Law of Management of Packaging and Packaging Waste which was enforced in 2009. Positive initiatives in waste management practices were undertaken by PAKOMAK, the first Macedonian company that has been holding the license for selecting and processing of packaging waste since January 2011. The company has a proactive role in promoting the importance of packaging waste and its management, with a special emphasis on projects that increase the awareness of the whole society, especially that of the young population. Some of the projects that increase the eco-awareness of young population will be presented in the paper.

The Producer Responsibility Regulations incorporated the EU Packaging Waste Directive into UK law in March 1997. The UK legislation adopted the concept of the “polluter pays” by sharing the responsibility for waste packaging recovery across the whole supply chain. However, the retailer as the last member of the supply chain assumed the greater share of 47 per cent of waste recovery targets. The operational and resource implications for individual company obligations were compounded by the introduction of a complex waste collection scheme involving third‐party waste recovery operators trading packaging recovery notes (PRNs). The UK approach has been criticised as “bureaucratic, ill‐conceived and confusing”, requiring companies to provide data on all primary, secondary and transit packaging they have generated, recovered and recycled over the previous year. While many retailers were unprepared for the complexities it created, others view the legislation as an opportunity to reduce waste, optimise their packaging supply chain and reduce costs. This paper will examine and compare the impact of the new regulations on various food retailers. Findings are discussed from a series of in‐depth interviews with a number of senior managers involved in implementing the legislation. In particular it discusses the initiatives carried out to comply with the regulations, the impact on existing logistics networks and the investment required to implement the regulations.

The purpose of this paper is to examine the issues affecting end of life (EOL) management of flexible packaging. It focuses on Sustainable Solid Waste Management by using multi-criteria decision making, analytic network process (ANP), and Strengths, Weaknesses, Opportunities, and Threats (SWOT).

Data were collected from 33 expert stakeholders, though a series of interviews and questionnaires. The subject seven aspects were applied from integrated sustainable waste management with 19 sub-criteria identified. Criteria were prioritized by using ANP and SWOT to the internal and external environments of organizations directly responsible for waste management.

The five most important factors in the management of flexible packaging waste include: techniques for waste management, material and design, management support, legislation and rule, and environmental care and environmental health, respectively. Solutions addressing flexible packaging waste were identified, including reuse and recycle, waste to energy, biopolymers, new innovative materials and material recovery.

Data were derived from the national authorities and large companies. The findings may not represent local authorities and small-scale manufacturers. Future research should be conducted, in order to investigate and focus around small manufacturing enterprises.

The findings provide a strategic framework for policy makers and industrial manufacturers. The benefits of this will enable them to address flexible packaging waste, by using qualitative and quantitative criteria.

This is the first paper developing a multi-criteria assessment model to specifically manage EOL flexible packaging, a possible pioneering piece of research in this field.

This purpose of this paper is to understand the environmental impacts of stakeholder-driven sustainable purchasing policies in institutional settings.

The research is framed using stakeholder and life cycle assessment (LCA) theories. The study uses a multi-method approach. Starting with interviews to understand the breadth of sustainability issues and significant food purchases facing institutional purchasing managers, the authors subsequently perform LCA of these various policies using the most popular food item in different categories.

From the interview results, the authors found that food purchasers focus predominately on cost, thus, are committed to food and packaging reduction. They are driven to buy local foods based on their consumer stakeholders but share their commitment to buying local products if the cost is appropriate. In the LCA of popular food items in multiple scenarios, avoiding food waste of various forms had significantly higher carbon emissions savings than packaging reduction or transportation minimizing (buy local) strategies.

The sample relied solely on the perceptions of institutional purchasing managers in university dining services. Future research should involve collecting data from other stakeholder groups such as the customers themselves, institutional leaders, and in other types of institutional settings such as hospitals and government agencies.

The research provides managers with insights concerning the trade-offs between different sustainability objectives. In particular, findings show that reducing waste related animal protein has a bigger impact on environmental performance than many other popular sustainability objectives such as buying local or reducing packaging waste.

The paper focuses on the purchasing trade-offs of buying local vs national food products, different packaging solutions, and food waste generation. These decisions offer some social benefits (improve the economic situation for local farms vs consolidated food producers) as well as multiple environmental benefits.

The paper presents new findings on the sustainability purchasing priorities of stakeholders in institutional food settings and subsequent LCA of those policies to show which might have the most environmental impact.

This paper presents an analysis of the influence of “Joint Environmental Policy-making” (JEP) in the operation of the company Smurfit Kappa (SK) in The Netherlands, Austria and Denmark (NL&AD). The paper aims to answer the question: to what extend has different levels of jointness and voluntariness of cardboard packaging-chain agreements between federal, governmental and business actors led to different recycling performances within the same company?

JEP's analysis was framed under the model described by Mol, Volkmar and Liefferink by using information from mixed-methods throughout a semi-structured questionnaire for interviews and revision of relevant secondary data. This is a case of cross-national comparison for which origin and implementation level of JEPs were described per country, in accordance with those stages of the cardboard production chain.

Jointness and voluntariness amongst other actors from governmental areas and business ranked high for the Dutch packaging-chain agreements with a visible impact in SK's recycling rates. SK in Austria and in Denmark, in this order, had a lower implementation level of JEPs which could be reflected in a lower recycling performance than in the Dutch SK subsidiaries. The context matters, including both political and social conditions. In particular, the role of householders as a last link in the recycling chain. Based on this, the selected countries share some societal characteristics associated with the environmental public awareness and active social participation.

This paper fulfills an analysis of how environmental policy making is affected by the country context within the same company.

By 1995 the EC hopes to have in force a new directive to replace directive 85/339 on containers of liquids for human consumption. Hopefully, this new directive will be more successful than its predecessor. By the directive the EC hopes to increase protection of the environment by establishing a return system for empty containers. It covers waste management by: (1) prevention, i.e. reduction of quantity or harmfulness of waste; (2) recovery, especially recycling; and (3) disposal, as a last resort. Discusses the impact of the directive on companies involved and how much can realistically be recycled; and that products cannot be recycled indefinitely. Also discusses the marking of packaging to indicate that it is reusable, recoverable, and its composition; and considers the value of this information to the consumer and those involved with disposal and waste management.

The purpose of this article is twofold. First, this study characterises the current state of the bio-packaging market's development. Second, it identifies key factors influencing and possible scenarios of the bio-packaging market transition to increase the market share of compostable packaging.

The results of 29 in-depth interviews (IDIs) with representatives of the key groups of bio-packaging supply chains' (SCs') stakeholders were the input for the consideration of the research problem.

The main economic, legal, social and technological enablers and barriers to the bio-packaging regime transition are recognised, and their impact at the market level is explained. The authors recognised the hybrid transition scenario towards an increase in the market share of compostable packaging related to the three traditional pathways of transformation, reconfiguration and technological substitution.

This study contributes to a better understanding of the socio-technical system theory by examining interdependencies between landscape (external environment), market regime (bio-packaging market) and niche innovations (compostable packaging) as well as system transition pathways. The findings and conclusions on bio-packaging market developments can be important lessons learnt to be applied in different countries due to the same current development stage of the compostable packaging lifecycle worldwide.

In 1987, Campbell Soup Company introduced the Souper Combo, a line of frozen soup and sandwiches. Melvin Druin, vice‐president for packaging, called it “the perfect combination of old‐fashioned good taste and today's convenience. No mess. No fuss. Easy to use. All you have to do is clean your spoon. Everything else just throw away.” Unfortunately, the multi‐layered plastic‐coated packaging does not just disappear when thrown away. Plastics packaging, particularly from convenience products, has become a waste disposal nightmare. Garbage, an environmental magazine, gave the Souper Combo an “in the dumpster” award, saying, “It's precisely the kind of product that's created the municipal landfill monster.”

The purpose of this paper is to expand understandings of how logistics can reduce food waste in food supply chains (FSCs).

Using a research framework that associates causes of food waste with logistics solutions, a multiple-case study was conducted in three Swedish FSCs of meat, fruit and vegetables, and ambient products, respectively, and involving industrial producers, wholesalers, and retailers. Data were collected during 19 semistructured interviews and four site visits, and logistics solutions were analysed according to logistics activities, actors involved and their stages in the FSC, and coordination mechanisms.

A joint analysis of nine logistics solutions revealed that to efficiently reduce food waste in FSCs, solutions have been implemented at three stages of FSCs, as well as that those solutions differ in their integration of six logistics activities and four coordination mechanisms. The findings moreover indicate that the solutions are interlinked, thereby implying that coordination is necessary both within solutions as well as among them.

The chief limitation is that the potential of the identified logistics solutions is not quantified.

The paper makes recommendations for reducing food waste in FSCs by developing new solutions and modifying existing ones.

The paper suggests ways to reduce significant environmental impacts of food waste.

By building upon previous research explaining causes of food waste, this paper focusses on logistics solutions for reducing such waste.